


all the requisite parts

by novembersmith



Series: tentacles in fortunate places [2]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Anticipation, First Time, Fluff, M/M, Oral Sex, Public Sex, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 20:20:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novembersmith/pseuds/novembersmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year and some change spent in Night Vale did wonders for one’s sense of perspective. No new appendages? No missing appendages? No blood, no pain, no demonic possession? Probably not worth worrying about.</p><p>But still. Best to narrow down the cause.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the requisite parts

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place pretty much immediately after the previous story, [(nothing) could be better.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/895141)
> 
> Immeasurable thanks to everyone who looked at any draft of this, but especially to podklb, my best girl, and to were_duck, my brilliant eyes. You guys rock.
> 
> This somehow spawned into a series, and I 100% blame Cecil for his desire to draw this out. Sorry everyone. BLAME CECIL OKAY I THOUGHT THE TENTACLE PORN WOULD BE FLOWING FREE ASAP but no.

Carlos is in line paying for a lavender latte and a balsamic chai, staring down in un-caffeinated befuddlement at his wallet, when he notices the skin of his left fingers is, well. _Moving_. Or rather, his skin has been laced with lines, pale silver like scar tissue, and _those_ are moving, branching and reforming like heat lightning.

Huh, he thinks, only distantly alarmed. A year and some change spent in Night Vale did wonders for one’s sense of perspective. No new appendages? No missing appendages? No blood, no pain, no demonic possession? Probably not worth worrying about. 

But still. Best to narrow down the cause.

Last night... there had been the date, with Cecil. Of course, for reasons that were probably best not dwelt on in public, he hadn’t been paying particularly close attention to his own hands then.

Afterwards, Carlos had unlocked the lab in a haze of sticky, dazed arousal. He does not recall observing his hands at that time, so, non-conclusive. He’d washed off in the chemical shower in the lab (his shower in the above-stairs apartment tended to ooze fascinating but not especially ablutive substances), changed into a spare lab coat and his emergency science boxers, transcribed his notes from the film, and checked on all of his clock cultures and spider terrariums.

Colony #12 of sand spiders had finished reading through their copy of 'String Theory for Dummies,' and were waiting to hear all about his date. They had all agreed Cecil really was the most thoughtful significant other, and thought it was very kind of him not to have bitten off Carlos’s head and laid eggs in his quivering corpse.

“So romantic,” Colony #12 had vibrated encouragingly together, atonal but somehow harmonic. “Bring him meat, bind him, bind him!”

And Carlos does appreciate their advice, really, he does. It’s well-meant. But, as neither he nor Cecil are, as far as Carlos knows, arachnid, he thinks he’ll stick to his daily offering of a cup of coffee.

Except. Fuck. Now he’s remembering the play of light along Cecil’s tentacle, curled along his fingers, and shivers, and _oh._ He stares at the hand holding his Night Vale Wells Fargo card, at the faint lines zig-zagging over his palm, twining playfully along his fingers. Like Lichtenberg figures from a soft, living lighting strike. Could...?

“Sir. Sir? Would you prefer to pay in blood or urine instead?” the clerk asks politely, and Carlos realizes he’s still standing there, clutching his his credit card and wallet.

“No, no, credit’s fine,” he assures her, and dazedly finishes the transaction.

Waiting for his orders, he flexes his hand, tests the slightly reddened skin. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, so much as feel a little over-sensitive, the slightest bit raw. He likes it, in the strange, illogical way he’s always enjoyed pressing on a bruise, or tonguing a cut lip. Cecil once had gotten a little over-enthusiastic with his kisses, forgotten the sharpness of his teeth, and had apologized profusely after, even though Carlos really didn’t mind.

“Bloodletting is just so intimate,” Cecil had worried, and Carlos had laughed and brushed it off, but. Night Vale is full of confusing rituals, of inexplicable customs, and some have solid scientific rationale behind them. Maybe there are rituals, or traditions, or _something_ for a greeting the morning after a semi-sexual encounter. A one-sided semi-sexual encounter.

And even if they’re aren’t official rituals, there might be social ones. Carlos has dabbled in all manner of academic areas, but sociocultural studies were never his greatest subject.

Carlos has unintentionally hurt Cecil before. And he remembers past colleagues, clucking their tongues.

“It’s too bad,” they’d said, looking him up and down, and Carlos had glanced over, registered that nothing was currently demanding his attention, and gone back to his work.

But he’d still heard when a grad student had asked: “What is?”

“His personality,” one of them had said. “What a waste.”

Carlos is still not sure who said it. He’s not especially good with faces, or voices.

It was a long time ago. There’s only one voice that matters to Carlos now, and it is unmistakable.

The fact remains, however, that Carlos is not good at registering important social nuances. He is, of course, trying, and Cecil is very patient with him. Wonderfully so. But Carlos hadn’t thought to research this aspect of things at all: how to behave upon the next non-sexual social encounter. He blanks on a source to consult. Porn very seldom addressed this aspect of interpersonal relations, and anyway, he had concluded it was useless to use porn or other such sources to navigate his relationship with Cecil in Night Vale.

He needs more than coffee, he thinks. He thinks that makes sense, based on the current parameters of their relationship. Coffee is normal, for every day. It’s a tradition, one that had been born of Carlos’s errors and turned into a system of demonstrative affection he feels comfortable with and secure in.

It started after Carlos had worked round the non-functional clock at dispelling a fungus threatening the Whispering Forest. Which, yes, a blight on the community and frankly creepy, with all the twisted bodies of former humanoid beings branching upwards and outwards and rooting down, their limbs still distinguishable for all their strange growths, their mouths rent in frozen agony.

But still, those trees had once been citizens, interns, booksellers, bank tellers, and if Carlos _could_ save them, then he had to try. It had necessitated working with earplugs, all through the night and through most of the day, and by the time he’d collapsed in bed and woken up again and shambled down to the Starbucks for a venti void-eye, his second date with Cecil had long since passed.

Cecil forgave him instantly, which inexplicably made Carlos feel worse. 

“Sometimes these things happen,” Cecil said sympathetically, staunching the wound at Carlos’s ankle, a root that hadn’t quite taken. “Job hazard, right?”

“Yes, but,” Carlos said wretchedly, “Josie said you were really upset.” Josie had said a lot of things, and the angels had just loomed and stared and disapproved until one of them coughed, not very subtly into another’s palm, _Scrub_.

Cecil looked sheepish and, not looking at him except through the thickest veil of lashes and bangs, said, “It’s just... I thought, for a moment, that you didn’t care.” He’d apologized immediately, said he knew Carlos better than that, he shouldn’t have doubted, he should have realized Carlos was busy with very important scientific work.

So Carlos had started making sure, each day, to bring Cecil a beverage of some sort. It seemed like an easily done, quantifiable and useful way of showing he did care. A smoothie, or an iced espresso, or an imaginary milkshake. 

He’s trained the spiders to all bark once Cecil’s show starts, so that even if Carlos is lost in his own head, his microscope, his notes, there is something to jolt him out of it.

But that’s the norm, now. And today is not entirely the norm. Is it? Does he want it to be? Why is everything governing personal interaction so difficult to quantify? Carlos has no idea how other people do it, how they seem to manage so effortlessly.

His order is called up, and Carlos looks at the barista. She is attractive, despite the fact she seems to be going into a molt. She’s probably youngish, and she must know something about local human (or humanoid) sexual interaction.

“I’m sorry, this is a personal query and it may be inappropriate, but have you had sex? And if so, what did you do afterwards?” Carlos asks, feeling desperate and out of his depth. Her scintillant eyes go wide.

“Mr. Scientist,” she says, sounding scandalized. “You are practically _married_.” What, Carlos thinks, not touching on the patronym. He’s long since given up attempting to inform the town that he does have a last name and that it isn’t a term for his employment. “I mean, you are very attractive and, gosh, your hair really is perfect–but no, I _couldn’t_.”

For a moment, Carlos registers that her voice sounds uncertain and that she is leaning across the counter towards him.

“No, sorry, sorry! I am not pursuing you sexually,” he says hastily, and she retreats with a sigh. “I just–am inexperienced with Night Vale’s customs. I thought. I am doing... an informal ethnographic study. I am asking you, for science, about post-coital practices. The day or morning after.” 

She takes a second to parse Carlos’s request, and Carlos takes a second to thank the non-existent stars of the void that Cecil doesn’t work until late in the afternoon, at which hour the local coffee shop is virtually empty except for the odd angel and hooded figure.

“Omigod,” she concludes. “Did you and Cecil...? _Omigod_. Was it magical?”

“Um,” Carlos says. “I’m, uh–” she waves him off, thankfully.

“Nevermind,” she says dismissively. “It’ll be in the show later. So. Oh wow, you need advice? And you’re asking me?” Her throat glistens, jewel-like even beneath a few sloughing scales. “Oh! Well. Um. You won’t spread it _around_ , right?” Carlos nods, and wonders what it must be like to only have the Sheriff’s Secret Police and City Council know your private business. “Well. If I enjoy it and want to do it again, then, afterwards... Afterwards, I bring my partners meat.”

“Meat,” Carlos repeats, and thinks, dammit. The Colony won’t let him live this down. They really had been quite insistent.

She nods. “Caught myself, fresh and bloody, from the sand wastes.” Her dewlap flickers out, then back in, and she looks a little embarrassed. Carlos politely pretends not to have seen. “But you’re not from here, you could just go to the butcher’s instead!” She smiles at him encouragingly. “But really, it’s not required. It’s just nice to go that extra step, you know? With someone special.”

“I didn’t know. But now I do. Thank you for your data,” Carlos says gravely, and takes this new knowledge and his two iced beverages out into the late desert afternoon.

“Good luck,” she calls after him, with that strange, wistful tone that some of the townfolk get when they see him. Carlos has never heard anyone outside Night Vale sound so meltingly fond of him, for so little reason. He isn’t special, except that for some reason, Night Vale, and Cecil, seem to think so.

Carlos doesn’t want to let them down.

He is slightly side-tracked by scientific wonder at the butcher’s–so many different species!–and then a little paralyzed by the sheer array of options. But the butcher, Mr. Bubbles, is very helpful, especially after Carlos explains what he’s looking for. After something that might have been an hour, Carlos leaves the butcher shop armed with no longer iced, but diluted coffee (oh well) and carefully wrapped, freshly killed, young portabellas.

Not a traditional meat gift, apparently, but at least a meat that Carlos feels confident that Cecil enjoys.

And, Mr. Bubbles assured him: “No cooking needed! They’re best raw, freshly sliced. I breed this stock myself, to be sure no nasty pesticides or growth hormones slip in. These are organic, free-range, pure bonemeal-fed ‘bellas, yessir. Why, I supply Gino’s Italian Dining Experience and Grill and Bar myself!”

So Carlos feels pretty good about his selection. Meaty, but not _too_ meaty. Not a big deal, but not nothing, either.

When Carlos knocks on the station door, an intern–to his embarrassment, he doesn’t know this one’s name–opens it and beams at him.

“Ooh, Mr. Scientist,” the intern coos at him. “Come in, come in! Mr. Baldwin is broadcasting but he’ll be done soon.”

“Uh, thanks,” he says, and the intern ushers him along, smiling widely with several mouths. The red recording light above the sound booth is on, but the intern opens the door anyway. The sound of Cecil’s voice spills out into the hall like an oil slick, spreading richly over all the surfaces. He’s saying something about helpful citizens providing on-the-scene-updates, about civic-minded town heroes.

Carlos loves watching Cecil broadcast, the way his eyes seem to turn inwards, his hands mobile, his face expressive and conversational. It’s almost as though he’s communicating directly with Night Vale, though of course no one else is physically in the booth with him.

Carlos generally just watches for a few moments through the window before leaving his offering of coffee with an intern, or, if he has time, settling to wait with some journal articles on his iPad until Cecil gets a break.

It’s definitely a new experience, and a pretty fascinating one, to get to both watch Cecil broadcast and listen.

Then Cecil flicks a curious glance over to the open door and cuts himself off mid-word.

“Listeners, he’s _here_! Now, I know it is unorthodox, so early in the show, and I do beg your pardon and the pardons of Station Management, but I can’t. wait. I must leave you with:

 _The Weather_.”

Cecil, still staring at Carlos with all of his eyes, hits a button on the soundboard without looking, shoves back his headphones, and reaches out towards Carlos.

“You’re here, come _here_ ,” he says, and reels Carlos in before Carlos can even worry about what sort of greeting to give. Cecil kicks the door shut behind them on the grinning intern, then pulls Carlos closer by the lab-coat lapels, kissing him once, very hard, very fast. “You brought me _mushrooms_.”

“How’d you–oh. _Oh_ ,” Carlos says, going hot. Of course. Cecil knows everything that goes on in Night Vale, why wouldn’t he know this? But before Carlos can become too flustered or embarrassed, Cecil is backing him up against the sound booth’s door, then dropping to his knees.

“When the reports started coming in I thought I would _die_. You’re just so–” Cecil says, and presses his face to the front of Carlos’s jeans. Carlos attempts to verbalize a response, but he fails. Cecil breathes on him, hot and damp through the denim, and whatever Carlos had meant to say is lost, hissed out through his teeth in meaningless sibilants.

“Exactly,” Cecil says, his voice muffled slightly, then he turns and rubs his cheek against Carlos’s cock, an unexpected stimulus that reroutes a good portion of Carlos’s blood supply. “You’re so careful. Full of care. My Carlos. Please, is this okay? Can I?”

“Can you what?” Carlos asks dumbly, and Cecil smiles up at him in a way that is impossible, as breath-taking as Radon Canyon. Cecil is on his knees, and he has been mouthing Carlos’s cock through his clothes, and suddenly with a hot rush of his blood chemistry altering, priming itself for further stimuli, Carlos knows what Cecil is asking. Oh god.

“Take care of _you_ ,” Cecil says, and licks his lips, leans in and licks the metal key of Carlos’s zipper. “Please, I just, I want–”

“You don’t have to,” Carlos manages to say, but his hips are already pushing up, his heart thudding.

“Neither did you,” Cecil says, and nudges Carlos’s shirt up, kisses Carlos’s iliac crest, tongue flickering out hot and wet over skin over bone before he bites down, worrying the flesh a little with his teeth. Pinpricks of pain. Carlos shudders, flattens himself against the door and tries to remember to breathe. “I just, I, you are so _thoughtful_ , and wonderful, and we don’t have to, but I _want_ to–”

Before Carlos can really think, his body takes over and shoves everything down, his zipper, his jeans, his plaid boxers.

Then he is half-naked, at Cecil’s _work_ , in front of a fully-clothed Cecil, all tie and rolled shirt-sleeves and suspenders. For one long, stretched moment, cool ventilated studio air hitting his hard skin, Carlos just wants to hide, to curl around himself or to run.

But then Cecil makes a desperate, almost honking groaning sound, and Carlos is flushed with confused fondness right before Cecil leans in and licks him. Hot and sloppy and moaning all the while, from the base to the tip of his cock. Carlos stops wanting to hide, stops wanting to run, stops wanting anything but what he somehow, miraculously, already has.

“Cecil, you,” he stutters, and watches with wide eyes as Cecil does it again, and then again. Not like porn. Not practiced or perfect, but like Cecil is–exploring. Savoring. Carlos wants Cecil to stop teasing, wants more, wants things he’d never truly understood as worthy of wanting, and also wants Cecil to never stop. Somehow, he makes his arm move: triceps and biceps to flexor and extensor to tendons to hand, and finally his fingers brush Cecil’s wet mouth. There is no past or future, just the present sensation and sound and Cecil’s eyes, electric, on his own.

“Carlos,” Cecil moans, rubbing his wet lips over the tips of his fingers, then the tip of Carlos’s cock. “God, perfect. You’re so perfect, you’re so–” He buries his nose for a moment in Carlos’s pubic hair, mouths lower, hands cupping the curve of gluteus muscles, digging in. Carlos can’t move. Every muscle group is focused on keeping his knees locked, his body upright, his hips from thrusting forward. He chokes a little on air and the thick, impossible words on his tongue.

“You’ll have to be quick, can you be quick? Why do I do this to myself, I don’t _want_ to be quick, but I want–” Cecil says, and Carlos barely hears him, because Cecil’s cut himself off by actually taking Carlos into his mouth, just the head of his cock, and he’s tonguing something–the frenulum– _some_ portion of Carlos’s anatomy that Carlos no longer cares about words for, because words are pointless, everything is pointless but _this_.

Carlos makes a high, keening noise, and comes, which probably gets the answer across well enough.

He slides down the door, because maybe there’s more oxygen near the floor, there’s certainly not a lot further up, and Cecil goes with him, still kissing his belly and thighs and nuzzling. His face is a mess, slick and shiny with spit and seminal fluids, and his eyes are darker than Carlos has ever seen.

“Hi,” Carlos says thickly, and curls his body down so that he can kiss Cecil’s messy, wonderful mouth.

“Carloooos,” Cecil moans, hands clutching at his things, opening and closing like hungry mouths. “I am going to die, the Weather is almost over, I am going to die. Oh, oh, you’re so lovely, you brought me _portabellas_ , you let me taste you, you taste wonderful, I have to _work_ –”

Carlos drinks in Cecil’s hoarse voice, feels it slip down his throat into his lungs, into his bloodstream. “Cecil,” he says, and nuzzles. He feels lazy, and satiated, and proud. Like he’s published a paper, like he’s solved a puzzle. “Cecil, Cecil.” Cecil is draped over Carlos now, hands everywhere and extra appendages winding and writhing.

“What, what is it,” Cecil mumbles, and arches his back. He should look ridiculous. He does, but he also looks wonderful.

“You have to work,” Carlos reminds him, and oh, the curves of Cecil’s ass fit perfectly in Carlos’s palms. He likes that, a lot more than he’d have expected. It’s just hands on a body, elegant in its simplicity, as precise and exact as the cosmic background radiation of the universe, proof of a Big Bang. Perfect.

Cecil, Carlos reflects, makes him feel like maybe there’s a point to poetry.

“Noooo,” Cecil is saying, pushing back into Carlos’s hands, then he’s on his own hands and knees, head down, panting a little over Carlos’s stomach. “Work, ugh. God. Oh no. _Look_ at you.”

“Difficult. I don’t have a mirror,” Carlos replies, amused and happy. He’s happy to look at Cecil instead. Cecil, who is a mess, shirt rucked up and hair wild, tie askew. It’s a good look.

“Stop smiling,” Cecil hisses, and then surges forward and kisses Carlos again, teeth against teeth and tongues stroking deep. Their bodies are plastered together and Cecil is so desperate, whining and panting, mouth hungry on Carlos’s, that despite his recent orgasm and the limitations of a male refractory period, Carlos feels his cock twitch.

“Oh hell, oh damn,” Cecil whispers, and he pulls back, pressing his forehead to Carlos’s. “Dead air.”

And then like a bandage being ripped off, he’s off of Carlos and back in his chair. The Weather is over.

“Listeners, I want to thank you again for all your help this morning, both in advising Carlos and keeping me apprised of his progress through the town. Carlos, as Sam Taylor the botanist reported, did in fact purchase a gift of portabellas, after receiving advice both from his own hand-reared literary spider colony and from members of our beloved community.”

His voice rasps, just slightly, and for a moment Carlos wants to follow him up into that chair, taste the difference in that voice, see how hoarse it can really get.

But the red On-Air light is on. Carlos didn’t come here to get Cecil in trouble at work. He grins a little, shifting luxuriously before awkwardly trying to pull his pants and boxers back up. Cecil’s eyes slide over towards him before jerking away again, his hands tightening on his papers.

“And, dear listeners, those bellas smell _wonderful_. Freshly blooded, bruised and tender, with the flavor of our first date together redolent within. I can hardly hold myself back. I am _famished_. But, to indulge in the gifts of my sweet, thoughtful, perfect Carlos at this time would deprive our gracious and generous community of our council-mandated city news, and so, hungry and yearning, in a state of sweet torture, let’s go to the traffic.”

All the while, Cecil’s chin has been resting in his hand, and he has been staring at Carlos with a look that Carlos can only describe as ravenous. Or famished, the way Cecil had said it, drawn out and predatory, eyes dark and focused.

Carlos can feel his adrenal gland dumping hormones into his bloodstream, spiking the dopamine and prolactin post-coital cocktail with nervous anticipation.

Then the door opens behind him, sending him shambling forward to get out of the way, and he can feel the weight of Cecil’s gaze shift as someone pokes their head inside the small room.

“Ah, it’s Intern Absalom with a statement from one of our esteemed Mayoral candidates. Thank you, Absalom.” Cecil begins reading the clay tablets, rattling off cuneiform with ease, his voice once again smooth, professional velvet.

Some strange new impulse sends Carlos back to his feet and over to Cecil’s chair, instead of out the door after Absalom. As Cecil reads on about party platforms and council-mandated gerrymandering, Carlos leans down and brushes his lips over the nape of Cecil’s neck. The skin there is very soft, and Carlos smiles to hear Cecil’s voice waver. He slides a hand, the one he’d noticed earlier was shocked silver with some sort of biological electricity, down Cecil’s chest. He keeps a slow, steady pace, his marked fingers hitting each button, one by one, until he reaches Cecil’s trousers. A tendril of something cool and electric peeks out of them, and Carlos finds it with his fingers.

“Come by the lab when you’re done?” he breathes into Cecil’s ear, and tugs the tentacle gently with his fingers. He listens for the break in Cecil’s breathing, takes note of what makes it hitch, then adjusts his grip to be tighter, faster.

“Sorry, ah, technical difficulties–quick word from sponsors you may–may have heard before!” Cecil garbles, slamming his hand down on a button, and then he yanks Carlos in towards him, in such a series of swift moves that Carlos finds himself deliciously alarmed and laughing with it.

“You!” Cecil says happily, furiously. “You are _asking for it_ later, mister.”

“Yeah,” Carlos says, and brings his hand up to kiss the glowing blue tentacle wound around his fingers. He feels sparks in his skin, on his tongue. He feels comfortable, confident. Excited, in every sense of the word. He sucks lightly and all of Cecil’s eyes flutter and roll back slightly. “I really kind of am.”


End file.
